"It just didn't live up to very, very high expectations," he explained.

For Google, Wednesday's drop may prove to be little more than a blip. But it has reminded Wall Street that even one of the most widely-held and admired companies can still produce earnings shocks.

"This shows that Google is not impervious," said Scott Kessler, an analyst at Standard & Poor's.

It was not all bad news for Google, however. While profits may have missed, sales were in line and grew by 86% to $1.92bn as new features including its e-mail service Gmail helped it attract advertisers.